-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...

-The New Indian Express HYDERABAD: Food Sovereignty Alliance (FSA) has been in existence across 13 districts in both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana since 2013. It brings onto a common platform - Adivasi, Dalit, Pastoralist and Peasant social movements along with co-producers, to build solidarity with one another for a common vision of food sovereignty and they screened Breeding Invasions at Lamakaan on Sunday evening followed by an open forum. This film produced...

-The Hindu Business Line Drop the euphoria for a moment - a third of India is seriously poor. And urban poverty has risen sharply The latest report on the number of poor Indians shows a third of the population living below the recalibrated poverty lines. C Rangarajan, a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India and former chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, was asked to look into the matter...

-The Indian Express UIDAI: PM wants 100 cr enrolment at earliest, linking Aadhaar to passports, benefits. Putting to rest Speculation about the fate of the UPA government's flagship Aadhaar project and the Direct Benefits Transfer scheme, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday sought a 100-crore enrolment target under Aadhaar at the "earliest", also asking officials to look into linking passports with its data. The Prime Minister also gave a decisive push to all...

-The Indian Express Despite the bureaucratic mindset, there are also tremendous positive effects. As Speculation mounts by the day that the Modi government is thinking of winding up the Planning Commission, this is an opportune moment to reflect on the relevance of the institution in the context of a rapidly changing Indian economy and society. One way of classifying institutions is in terms of the balance between their potential positive power (PPP) and...